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At a time when the artistic and economic spheres of south Louisiana are hoarse from devastation, a 59-year-old Transylvanian author may be speaking out the loudest. With New Orleans, Mon Amour: 20 Years of Writings from the City, savage poet, radio commentator and LSU professor Andrei Codrescu has composed a definitive statement on the city to our south, the cultural capital of Louisiana.

Codrescu’s narrative gazes on what he calls the Golden Age of New Orleans (the late 1980s through 2000), a period of artistic renaissance when poets and like-minded souls converged on the Crescent City like settlers in covered wagons.

Part celebration, part elegy, Mon Amour details how Codrescu became a Window Gang regular at Molly’s—an Irish lit bar on Decatur with a perfect view for watching the world go by—and his frustrations in the days following Katrina. In print, Codrescu praises New Orleans and its virtues. In conversation, he laments what he is certain is lost forever.

“New York had its time,” Codrescu says. “San Francisco was a tourist trap. New Orleans is the only city in America where [artistic renaissance] is still possible. Of course, now it’ll be run by casinos, and artists won’t be able to afford housing.”

Codrescu is furious at the thought of New Orleans signing corporate sponsors for Mardi Gras. Instead, the author suggests taking the festival’s creative genius directly to Washington with parade-goers donning Bush masks and chaining themselves to the White House gates.

The author spends time in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and a secluded cabin in the Ozarks, far from the social stimuli he comments on with color and resolve and very little mercy. Between classes Codrescu can be seen at local poetry readings or coffee shops pouring over The Times-Picayune. Confounded by the misuse of Chimes Street, he has yet to find a place in Baton Rouge that sufficiently reminds him of New Orleans, his adoptive home, his city of dreams.

“If after Katrina and gentrification, New Orleans is still a place for writer’s dreams, then poetry has won one against the more sober-minded world,” he says with exasperated longing and a hint of hope.

Photo by Brian Baiamonte